The Baronet’s Bartered Bride (Ladies Least Likely #10)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Joseph Illingworth had been sacked enough times to know how to handle himself when he was tossed out on his ear.

He’d learned, through plenty of practice, how to retain a gallant smile when a lady trod all over his heart.

But now that he was a man of the world and some connections, who had paid his dues and acquired the necessary polish, it was time he made something of himself.

It was essential that he stand on his own two feet and prove his worth.

He refused to ride the coattails of his relations or collect unearned awards and preferments, fattening himself at another’s table.

He would earn his own keep, advance by the sweat of his own brow, carve his own way through the ruthless and uncaring world. He wanted to fatten himself at his own table.

And he couldn’t even obtain a position to be sacked from.

“Your sister is the Duchess of Hunsdon?” At this point in the interview, which inevitably came, the agent or steward or whoever was reviewing his references would let the paper fall to the desk and peer at Joseph with curiosity, affecting a squint, a fatuous smile, or sometimes pulling a monocle from a fob to magnify him in all his fortune and flaws.

“Your brother is the Duke of Hunsdon,” his interviewer would then hasten to clarify.

“Brother by marriage,” Joseph would say, resigning himself to what came next.

Sometimes it was fulsome admiration that Joseph should stand so close to the halo of ducal glory.

Sometimes his interlocutor’s attitude turned to suspicion, if the interviewer knew the duke’s political views and suspected Joseph was as radical.

Once or twice, someone mentioned Amaranthe’s antiquarian bookshop, of which she was inordinately proud and also rather infamous in London, being a duchess engaged in trade.

But such interviews always ended in the same manner: with Joseph being shown the door.

“I’m afraid we don’t have a position for someone of your qualifications.”

“St. John’s College, Oxford,” Joseph would argue at this point. “I was tutor to the Duke of Hunsdon’s siblings before they went off to school.” This was where his interviewer would rise, signaling the discussion was at an end.

“I’m freshly returned from my Grand Tour,” he’d hasten to add as the interviewer conducted him to the doorway of the parlor or office or study from which he was about to be ejected.

“Fencing in Paris. Carnival in Vienna. Put my shovel into the excavations at the Roman Forum. Dined with Hamilton in Naples and watched Vesuvius spilling over.”

He wouldn’t clarify that, while most young blades on their Grand Tour devoted years to the effort, Joseph had discharged his in mere months, being observant of his lack of funds.

There was only so far a man could stand to be under the thumb of a younger sister who had made herself over from an orphaned vicar’s daughter and slightly disreputable tradeswoman into a young, admired, and, some would say, a rather dashing duchess.

A man had pride, for God’s sake, and Joseph wanted to blaze his own path through society, not always be dragging in a ducal train. Even if, all things considered, Malden Grey was more tolerable than the usual run of paunchy, self-satisfied, condescending peers.

“Over-qualified, I mean to say,” was the current response to Joseph’s protest. “This post couldn’t possibly suit someone of your knowledge and talents. You would find your vast gifts sadly underutilized educating three young boys.” The solicitor hesitated. “Particularly these boys.”

“I daresay it would be more of a challenge than you’d expect,” Joseph argued.

He saw one more plum position slipping through his grasp as the solicitor, wearing an antique bag wig and coats with many-buttoned sleeves, handed him his hat.

“My Greek is rather weak, all things considered, and my sister, the duchess, is the one who drills me on my Latin declensions.”

He’d staked everything on this last gamble paying off. The Earl of Aldthorpe’s two younger sons were rumored to be devils, but surely it would behoove the family to have a duke’s brother by marriage looking after boys who were the grandsons of a marquess.

To his surprise, his objection didn’t work in Joseph’s favor.

The reminder that Joseph had a duke’s strings to pull, and a duchess’s sisterly affections, raised a visible degree of alarm in the Bales family solicitor.

The discreet advert had raised all his hopes, promising the opportunity he needed.

And now this milk-pale, bug-eyed man, who already had a secure position and income and place in the world, was going to deny Joseph his.

“I have Hunsdon’s ear,” Joseph said desperately as the solicitor herded him toward the door of the London office. “I dine at the ducal table quite often. Surely the Earl has some special cause—a relative looking for advancement?”

The Marquess of Langford, Aldthorpe’s father, was a staunch Tory, mingling much in the upper echelons of government and lending his weight to the matters of war and conquest. Quite likely Mal, the Duke, who was publicly in favor of granting the American colonies their independence, was persona non grata to the current cabinet.

“It’s because Hunsdon is a relatively new creation, isn’t it?” Joseph clutched his cocked hat to his chest, unwilling to concede that the interview was over. “Or is it his politics? Because I can assure you—”

“Good day, Mr. Illingworth. I will be in touch if a post becomes available for which I can sincerely recommend you.” And the door to the solicitor’s office slammed shut in his face.

Joseph jammed his hat on his head, took up his brass walking stick, and huffed down the Strand, for once not being conciliatory and moving out of the way of the steady flow of other male pedestrians.

For a lady, of course, he stepped out of his way and touched the brim on his hat. He wasn’t an entire heathen.

But he had spent his life being conciliatory, and perhaps that was the problem. He was too pliable. He was ever the one who bent, who accommodated, who placated. His father had taught him this was how a good man, a man of Christian morals and good sense, made his way in the world.

But Jonas Illingworth had been nothing more than the second son of a gentleman and led the humble life of a vicar in an obscure if lovely parish in Cornwall.

He had been well on his way to making absolutely no mark on the world before typhus carried him off in his prime and made certain he left no legacy whatsoever.

Joseph was traveling the same path. If he fell off the edge of the earth tomorrow, what would he leave behind?

A string of positions he had failed at or found unsuitable. A string of women who had played marbles with his heart. A sister who was moving in the highest circles, rising on a tide of acclaim and admiration and accomplishment while he continued sinking into the waters of obscurity.

At this rate he would leave nothing of worth behind, nothing proclaiming “Joseph Illingworth was here,” and suggesting the world was a better place for it.

He rounded the King’s Mews, where George kept his royal stables, and advanced up Princes Street with a grim stride.

It was time for a change in his life. It was time for a change in him.

The old ways had failed him, and a new man must be born.

A man of vigor. A man of purpose. A man of unbendable steel.

He wheeled into the narrow channel of George Court that connected Princes and Rupert Street and nearly collided with the carter bearing a load of casks from the Blue Posts.

Even horses found him of so little consequence that they would run him down in the street.

All the more reason Joseph needed to become, somehow, a man of substance.

The snug little house he stopped at wasn’t even his, though he’d lived there for several years. In a further taunt, his own lodgings had latched the door against him, and as Joseph sorted through his fobs and various pockets, he realized with growing outrage that he had neglected to carry the key.

He was a man with nothing. No wife and family, which he thought he’d have by now. No position in the world where his work mattered and gained him comfortable remuneration. He didn’t even have a home he could call his own.

Amaranthe had located and arranged for the premises when they first moved to London seven years ago, after Joseph took his degree from Oxford.

With no means to live on but the tiny income from the inheritance left them by their parents, Joseph had agreed that sharing accommodations was the most financially sound decision.

He had done his part as the man of the household and gone out to earn an income, leaving Anth to oversee the household and make all the little decisions about furnishings and food, assuming she would apply to him when she had need.

He’d not noticed she never applied to him. He’d not noticed she’d been supporting their household—and him—on her work as a copyist, letting Joseph build his savings for the home and family he dreamed of supporting one day.

The year before, after a thorough and humiliating jilting by one Miss Susannah Pettigrew, Joseph had collected his savings and taken himself on that overdue Grand Tour, desperate to have somewhere to go while his sister vaunted up the social ladder and tucked herself into a duke’s bed and a palatial house in Hanover Square.

After the customary rounds of carousing and culture absorbing, with a few interactions with women that could be called highly informative if not character building, Joseph had returned to London determined to establish himself.

And found every door shut in his face.

Including his own.

His ire fed itself to a towering wall as he pounded on the portal. He stood with a fist raised in the air, about to deliver another blow, when the door burst inward and a young woman appeared there like a thunderbolt dropped from Heaven.

His ire collapsed, as did his arm. A strange heat crawled up his insides, as it always did when she was near.

She disrupted his internal organs the same way she up-tilted his life, making all the stable, known, and reliable surfaces slide away in new and alarming directions.

While she stood in the center of the destruction like a deadly, beautiful pillar of fire, always burning, throwing a heat it would scald him to touch.

Inez had come back to him.

Again.